Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Yes Cecil, A Long Story Short, Part Thirty-Eight

Arthur Roquebrune sat at the kitchen
table quietly stirring a cup of warm milk, the raw sugar granules at
the bottom, grinding before the spoon like dirt in the escapement of
a fine clock.

A memory of his Father came to him. His Father sitting at the old
homestead's long golden pine kitchen table, stirring his morning
coffee, and then tapping the spoon on the rim like a call to order.
So many mornings ago. So many coffees. So many spoons. He gently
withdrew the spoon and looked down at the swirling foamy milk and
thought of distant galaxies and how far back in time they were,
distant stars and stellar gases perceptibly reducing his sense of
reality, making him feel like he was hovering just above the chair,
the house around him held together by a seemingly haphazard
combination of forces, everything so conditional and temporal. The
thought of his dead parents now being part of this universe or
universes, energy, vapour, dust, spirit, brought him back to reality.
There was a weight to sorrow, a weariness in the fundamental memory
of family.

Getting up, he carried his milk to the
kitchen door, paused to look at the clock which read 1:23 a. m., and
then turned out the light and made his way down the hall to his
study. Sitting in the large Wingback chair in front of his desk, he
sipped his milk and imagined himself behind the desk, trying to
imagine what Thérèse would see if she were sitting here this
morning? A foolish man? A man caught up in a professional request he
should have quietly shelved? A guilty man for introducing a young
woman to possible danger? He shook his head at his imaginary self.

His mind went over the events of the
evening. His driving down to the office and dealing with the alarm
system; his search for the key in his desk for Jerome's apartment,
then the decision to go to the locked vault to look at the files of
David Ashemore with the thought that he should dispose of them
without a discussion with Wormwood or Verdigris, and then finding
nothing but a clean metal shelf gleaming dully in the overhead light
where Ashemore's files should have been. How he had searched, with a
mounting sense of possible danger, as if someone might still be in
the building, but finding nothing. Ashemore's boxes and files were
gone. Even the dust that must have surrounded them on the shelf had
been wiped away. He had almost thought it all a dream.

There must be a reason for this he
thought. Ashemore has been dead a year. Why the sudden interest and
actions taken? A change of personnel perhaps? A command to clean up
the previous mess, deal with the loose ends and close the file once
and for all? Write David Ashemore off for good, cleanly with no
repercussions? Mr. Roquebrune had not revealed any of the Ashemore
story to his wife, a case which had turned into a misfortune of
cascading importunities. His profession had already occupied too much
of their possible time together, all those six and seven day weeks.
The long hours. They added up to years. Years.

He had driven home nervously looking in the rear view mirror for signs of being followed, but only noticed the receding darkness interspersed with splashes of light from the street lamps overhead.

His wife had accompanied him back to
Jerome's rented space behind their house, and together, like the aged
sleuths Poirot and Miss Marple, they had begun to investigate. Little
was revealed except that Jerome was fairly neat and tidy, was working
on what looked to be studies of an old Renaissance portrait of a
lovely woman, and that he was possibly reading an oddly titled book
of poetry called Alacrity and Karma on a Yacht off Palmyra by
someone called P. K. Loveridge. Everything had seemed in
order. Mrs. Roquebrune, however, discovered that Jerome's answering
machine had reached its capacity for messages. She pushed the play
button and they listened to a string of automated messages, contests
for cruises, a message from his dentist, one from someone called
Pascal Tessier concerning a sale of a painting, and long mysterious
silent messages in between them all, as if silence was a message in
itself. Mr. Roqubrune wondered if Thérèse had been calling just to
listen to his voice on the machine and wait to see if he picked up.
As they had approached the door to leave, Mrs. Roquebrune had noticed
a business card on the floor beneath a coat rack, a business card for
Jonathan Landgrave, of Landgrave & Landgrave, Notaries.
Arthur had tuned it over to see “the portrait of Lucrezia
Panciatichi by Agnolo Bronzino” written on the back in a bold
script. His wife had asked him if he knew the notaries. He knew of
them he told her. An excellent firm.

They had walked back to their home each
imagining differing scenarios. A missing painting? A request for a
forgery? A possible death of a painter? Approaching the back door
steps, they had both imagined a drawing room crowded with an
assemblage of shady characters, one of them guilty, their
imaginations fuelled by the British mystery series they would watch
on Sunday evenings, their one television indulgence.

It had been with uneasiness that he
had dialled the long-distance number for Thérèse in Bergen, his
guilt echoed with each dissonant tone in his ear,
his index finger pressing down harder and harder as he went through
the numbers, the sounds assaulting his ear like the self punishment
of a penitent. She had answered almost immediately and Arthur had
resigned himself to supposition and conjecture. No, Jerome had not
been at home, but all was in order. He must be out for the evening he
had said. Nothing was amiss he had assured her. He would phone her
tomorrow with further information concerning Jerome and the Ashmore
case. He had tried to reassure her there was no danger, but, all the
while, had been indecisive whether to reveal to her that the files
had disappeared from Wormwood & Verdigris. Would it make
her feel safer to know, or the reverse? Since it was late, he had
decided to leave it till tomorrow.

He would phone Jonathan Landgrave in
the morning after checking to see if Jerome was at home. Then, the
phone call to Thérèse.

What would a relatively poor painter be
doing with the business card of a specialist in hypothecary and real
estate law he wondered? Landgrave was involved in many large projects
involving condominium and commercial developments, and had created a
firm with his brother that had prospered even in the hard times. He
fingered the card, turning it over in his left hand like a detective
with a single clue. A portrait by Bronzino of Lucrezia Panciatichi?

He got up and went around to sit at his
desk and pulled out a file from the lower drawer, a file that he turned
to when faced with troubled thoughts. His pastime was translating
poetry, and before him was Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a
Country Churchyard, and Paul Valéry's Le Cimetière Marin
to which he was giving his attention of late. Translating one into
French and the other into English provided an outlet for his creative
talents and allowed him to forget the day.

He looked upon the next stanza of the
Valéry poem to translate, and read it with faint hope.

Temple du Temps, qu'un
seul soupir résume,

A ce point pur je monte et
m'accoutume,

Tout entouré de mon
regard marin;

Et comme aux dieux mon
offrande suprême,

La scintillation sereine
sème

Sur l'altitude un dédain
souverain.

As he sharpened a pencil, he
consoled himself that the sun was rising in Bergen, a fresh day with
a renewed bustle of citizens and the safety of light.

Chumley's Rest

On Books

Henry James Quotes

The only success worth one's powder was success in the line of one's idiosyncrasy. Consistency was in itself distinction, and what was talent but the art of being completely whatever it was that one happened to be? One's things were characteristic or were nothing.

-The Next Time (Story originally published in The Yellow Book; issued in his collection Embarrassments, 1896.)

"We know too much about people in these days; we hear too much. Our ears, our minds, our mouths, are stuffed with personalities. Don't mind anything that anyone tells you about anyone else. Judge everyone and everything for yourself." (R. Touchett)